Chapter Five - Nothing Good

"Wakey-wakey..."

I was awake instantly, but I didn't let that show just yet. One part because I'd trained to keep still and silent after waking up so that I could assess my situation, another part... well, it was warm and soft, and I was very, very comfortable at the moment.

Ah, right... the cat situation.

"Come on, Marchioness Muffinmuncher, I can't get out of bed if you're sleeping on my chest."

I blinked my eyes open and took in the room. It was dark, and I could tell it was dark with the only light coming in from a crack under the door, and yet I could make out everything in the room with ease. No colours popped out, but shapes did. It wasn't as good as some of the better night vision I'd used, but it was pretty close. A small advantage to being a cat, maybe.

Standing up, I felt a large hand move down along my back even as the blankets around me shifted. I'd fallen asleep in the crook of Sharp's arm. "Good morning," I said. "What time is it?"

"I have no idea, but it feels like morning."

I nodded. It did feel like morning. Our first in this little room. "You didn't tell me how the job went yesterday."

"Oh, it was fine," Sharp said as she sat on the edge of the bed. She had to lift me up and put me back down for that, but it was fine. "Paris is nice... under all that gruff. She showed me what to do, and how to work the till, and then had me take orders from a few tables near the front. There are other waitresses that work here, you know? And there's an auto-server bot too."

"I see. They've all been kind?"

"So far, yeah! I did what you asked and listened real hard. Uh, there really wasn't too much gossip. Or like, I got snatches of conversation here and there, but it's never enough to put it all together into a whole story, you know?"

"There's a certain art to it," I said. "Keep listening, and eventually you'll get somewhere." Worse case she never heard anything useful, but it would still be good training for her observational skills. "Did any of your skills improve?"

"Nope, sorry."

That was fine too. "Try to befriend the other workers if you can, but also keep your distances. Just a friendly workplace relationship is more than good enough."

"Okay. I think Paris hinted to them that I was a poor street urchin that she felt pity for. Which has the benefit of being mostly true."

"Good," I said. "When's your next shift?"

Sharp shrugged. "She said that the bar was closed in the morning for cleaning, and it only opens at three. I'm taking the two to nine shift. She doesn't want me for night one."

That also made some sense. Night was when the most rambunctious customers would be out. Her shift starting an hour before opening was probably for cleaning up before the bar opened properly.

"That leaves about a quarter of the day free," I said. "She hasn't paid you yet, correct?"

"Nope! But she did show me where the lost and found is. There's like, a treasure chest in there. Jackets, some shoes, I think a few knives. She said I can take whatever I want. They empty it every month. Oh! And look at this!" Sharp dove down and picked up her work shorts, then rooted around in the pockets. She came out with a small wad of cash. "I made thirty five dollars! This is my share of the tips for the shift I did!"

"That might be a good first stop," I muttered. Then I winced as my stomach grumbled. "But first, the washroom, and finding something to eat."

The washroom was... somewhat traumatising. Suffice to say that I had Sharp leave me on the sink and then I thanked the uncaring Eidolons that the sink handles were the long, bar-type ones that I could push around with my weight instead of motion sensors. It was degrading, but better than using a litter box.

Sharp took a shower. She was excited about having access to one and took in some of her old clothes. She squeezed them dry then set them on the floor of our room to air dry while we were off. It wouldn't leave them properly clean, but it was better than nothing.

There was a service for cleaning work uniforms at the bar, so her uniform was going to be taken care of every few days. Paris mentioned offhand that she'd deduct Sharp's first pay to get her a second set, and that was... fair.

Paris was being generous, and I didn't doubt that she'd continue to be for a little while. Her entire business model, outside of the bar, depended on her being a fair arbiter and on having a good rep.

She wasn't a fixer or anything like that. Instead she made the Bloody Bat a sort of neutral ground for mid-level gangsters and travelling fixers to meet in. There were plenty of normal clientele as well, of course. Having nothing but edgerunners as clients was a quick way to lose your business place.

Once we'd finished our morning ablutions, Sharp and I snuck into the kitchen and made off with some toast.

I wasn't sure if I should be eating solids yet, but it didn't feel like I was a kitten at the milk-only stage, so I judged it to be safe enough.

"Okay, the lost and found is here," Sharp said as she carried me into the main bar room. It was strange, seeing it entirely empty of workers and patrons. Half the lights were off, and the music was shut down.

Sharp went behind the further bar and opened a cabinet to pull out a large plastic bin. It was filled with junk.

"You can take anything?" I asked.

"They said they throw it all away. I guess maybe one of the others will sift through first, for anything valuable. Uh, wallets and phones and keys go in that cabinet over there. People usually come back for those, apparently."

Too bad. A wallet would mean a free ID and maybe the opportunity for a little bit of harmless credit card fraud.

Sharp moved some stuff around. It was mostly clothes. A few scarves, some jackets. Nothing too interesting. The coats were far too large, or the kind of fast-fashion trash that wouldn't last very long. Sharp set a baseball cap to the ground next to her, then some sunglasses that looked halfway decent.

"Keep the makeup," I said as she was about to drop a compact back in. "I'll teach you how to use that later."

"Okay!"

"And grab any knives you find. Oh, and those earbuds too. The vape pen."

"You want me to pick up smoking?" she asked.

I swatted her ear with a paw. "Don't be silly. We're going to sell all of this junk to a pawn shop. It won't earn us much, but a few dozen dollars right now might mean a lot."

Ideally, we'd be able to buy a phone. If I could use one as a cat, then I might, maybe, be able to access some of my bank accounts. Then I'd have a small fortune to fall back on.

The issue was that I used a good bank. The sort that wouldn't just let anyone access a customer's account, and at the moment I had no way of proving my identity if the bank demanded more than just passcodes and such.

I had other sources of cash squirrelled away here and there, and I could text some contacts as well. I just needed that first step, a way to get onto the net, and then I'd be fine.

Sharp found a frankly hideous purse at the bottom of the bin, and we used that to pack all of the stuff away. I did point out one of the knives that was better than the dinky fold-out she had. It was a quality little folding pocket knife from a reputable brand. The kind of thing that was a few hundred dollars new. We'd only get a few bucks at a pawn shop for it, so she might as well keep it. The blade looked clean still.

"Let's make checking this bin a frequent thing," I decided. It might be a good resource assuming we didn't make it rich soon.

"Sounds good to me!" she said. "Man, spending that perk on you was a super smart move! One day and I have a job, a room, and disposable cash!"

Nothing I'd done so far was impressive, but if she wanted to think it was, then that was fine. "Sure. Let's see how impressed you are once we finish this morning's run."

"R-run?"

"What's your Body skill at again?"

"Uh, one?"

"For now. Let's see if that changes. The first step will be working your muscles a little." If we made any real money at the pawn shop, then we'd spend some on food with meat in it. The girl needed some protein in her diet. Maybe we could save up for some small weights? We had a shower now, might as well work her hard enough that she'd have a good reason to use it.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

***

"I don't... like... working my... ugh... muscles," Sharp complained.

I was on her shoulder again, and to be entirely honest, I could sympathise a little. We'd left the Bloody Bat an hour or two ago--wow did I miss having access to the time all day round--and Sharp had asked one of the bouncers for the location of a semi-reputable pawn shop in the area.

There was one that did come highly rated. They were definitely not a fence. And it was definitely not a place that unscrupulous people used. Still, the pawn shop was called the Fence Pawnst, which I think was meant to be a pun but it came out so stupid sounding that it wrapped around to being a valid name.

It was halfway across the district, which meant walking all the way across Fenway.

That was actually pretty easy. Fenway was very walkable. There was even a relatively inexpensive trolley service and buses carting people around. The district made a lot of its money via tourism, and tourists were most efficiently divested of their cash when they arrived promptly and without complications.

A lone girl running across the districts with a cat by her side? That was a little strange, but not that bad. Though, to be fair, I could only sprint for a few dozen metres before tiring out, and Sharp's 'running' had quickly devolved into a sloppy, tired jog.

We had a lot of work ahead of us if we wanted to condition her into someone able to take on any sort of proper job.

I... had not been in perfect condition with my first few jobs either, but I didn't want to take the same level of risk with Sharp. This was a different time than when I was first starting out. Security was higher on average and people were a lot more guarded and suspicious now than when I was younger.

Walking up to a target and emptying a short-barreled twelve-gauge into their face would still work, but nowadays there were ways to track you after the fact.

Basically, if Sharp was going to go on the same career path as I did, we'd need her to be a little more talented than I was at the start.

Fortunately, she had me.

We made it to the Fence Pawnst an hour before noon. The shop was buried in a smaller skyscraper off of a wide boulevard. There was no signage on the outside, but once we stepped into the building there were dozens of neon signs pointing us to the place.

Its front was made up of two barred windows. The thick sort that could take an anti-tank round with barely a blemish. Behind one was a mix of electronic equipment. Speakers, TVs, laptops, a few power tools. The other had weapons. Used SMGs, an entire rack of pistols, a small collection of knives, and hanging above it all, a large SMART rifle chambered in .325 Super Savage.

I felt my whiskers twitching, but turned my attention away from the big gun. The door was the usual sort of armoured thing that only opened when Sharp pressed her thumb against a buzzer.

A camera tilted above, then the door opened on its own, letting us into the pawn shop.

It was crowded in there. Not by people so much as mountains of stuff. There were shelves, of course, but they couldn't fit everything, so lots of gear ended up on the floor.

An anti-theft turret hung from the ceiling, and I was sure that there was more security around that wasn't as obvious. A counter ran the length of the room at the rear where a few customers were dealing with one of the employees.

We had the choice between a human and a robot. Everyone else was lined up by the human, so Sharp naturally fit in behind the cue. The guy ahead of us smelled so strongly of weed that my eyes watered, but I supposed that was to be expected.

The line was a good space for Sharp to get her breathing in order after the jog over since it moved so slowly. But, as with all lines, it eventually became our turn. "Hi! I'd like to sell these?" Sharp placed the knives and other gizmos we'd picked up onto the counter.

The man behind it checked them all in a hurry. "Twenty."

"Twenty dollars?" Sharp asked.

"Yeah."

"That's... not a lot," she said.

"Offer a hundred."

"M-maybe a hundred?"

He stared, then sighed. "Don't know what kind of blow you're selling this crap for, but it ain't worth a hundred. I'll give you forty."

"Fifty?"

"Kay," he said before swiping it all into a bin. "Here's your receipt. There's a counter over there if you want to get paid."

"Thanks," Sharp said as she took the torn off piece of paper. "Aww, man, there's a five dollar convenience fee they take off the top?"

"Typical."

We moved to the counter at the far end of the room. It was a section with far more glass counters, many of which held books. Some modern paperbacks, others far older. The kind of tomes that the average person might have tossed away if they didn't also catch the eye and almost force your attention to linger on them.

"Magic," Sharp whispered.

"We'll see about that later. Once we can afford to. For now, let's get this over with. We can grab a snack on the way back."

That perked her up.

The payment counter was busy at the moment, however. Two young women were standing there, arguing with the man behind the counter. One of them was so short she had to reach up to stab a finger into the book before her. "Seven hundred? Have you lost your mind, bub?"

"That's the price on the ticket," the man said.

"It's worth half that, at best. And where's our discount?" she snapped.

"Discount?" he asked.

The girl slammed an open palm on the counter, then gestured to five more books next to them. "I'm buying your shit here, aren't I? Don't be a skeev, gimme that valuable customer discount or I'll go look for it elsewhere."

The man squinted his eyes, then sighed. "Five off the top."

"That better be five percent," the girl said. "And you forgot the twenty before."

"I'm not giving you a quarter off," he said.

She slapped the counter again. "Fine. Twenty."

They continued to argue back and forth, and I was ready to tune them out, except... "She's so pretty."

I turned towards Sharp, then followed her gaze. She wasn't eyeing the gremlin slapping the counter as if it owed her money, but rather the other young woman.

She was tall enough, maybe six feet with her hair worked up the way it was. Blonde, but her roots were black, with purple eyes that were obviously cybernetic. I could kind of see what Sharp saw. The woman was rail thin and exuded a sort of quiet confidence.

Then her eyes turned and she swept her gaze over the two of us. She tensed a little. "Jen. Threat."

The other girl stiffened and turned. I caught a glint of steel under her bright yellow jacket. She was packing a gun under there. "What you lookin' at, kid?" she asked Sharp.

"Uh? Me?"

"Yeah, you and your... is that a fucking cat?" She squinted. "Fuck, that is the mangiest thing I've seen in my life. I wouldn't let that thing ride me, no suh."

I growled. I wasn't mangey!

The girl turned to the counter, grumbled something to the guy behind it, then swiped a finger over a card reader. The total on the registry rang up to three thousand, for one small bag's worth of books.

"Come on, A," the girl said as she walked by. She very carefully made sure she was between Sharp and her taller friend.

Sharp shied back and away, then once they were past, she eyed the back of them for a moment until they were around a rack.

"R-right," she muttered. "Let's get our money and go, yeah?"

"Yes, let's," I agreed. That taller girl was trouble. The short one was too, but that kind of loud, brash attitude usually came with easy solutions. The other... I had a strong suspicion she was a magic user of some ilk, and that could mean anything.

We left the pawn shop a few minutes later and a few dollars richer. There was no sign of either girl around.

"Let's head back?"

"Sure," Sharp said. "But uh... my Protagonist stat just levelled up, and I don't know what that means."

I closed my eyes. "It means nothing good," I said.

***